


Those Who Tangle With Don Juan

by KChan88



Series: She Was Bound to Love You [11]
Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux, Phantom of the Opera - Lloyd Webber
Genre: Bisexual Female Character, Bisexual!Christine, Canon Era, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/F, Genderbending, Girls Kissing, Implied Sexual Content, Kissing, Lesbian Character, Lesbian!Raoul, Period-Typical Homophobia, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:34:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23841574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KChan88/pseuds/KChan88
Summary: What if Raoul de Chagny was a woman?A series featuring the major events (and a few things in-between) from the Phantom of the Opera, with a gender-bent, lesbian Raoul (and a bisexual Christine). ALW based, with Leroux elements.Scene 7: A first rehearsal for Don Juan goes badly. A teacher tries to talk to his student. Christine comes to terms with the fact that her angel is nothing but a devil in disguise, and it's clearer than ever that the composer is always watching.
Relationships: Raoul de Chagny/Christine Daaé
Series: She Was Bound to Love You [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1627735
Comments: 9
Kudos: 26





	Those Who Tangle With Don Juan

The first rehearsal for Don Juan doesn’t go well.

To say the least.

Carlotta is kinder now, which Christine is glad of, so there’s no fighting there anymore, but the tension among everyone in the opera builds and builds and builds until it’s tangible around every corner. In every note.

The note piece is what’s driving a pale, trembling Monsieur Reyer to distraction.

For the first time, Christine feels real, true rage at her old teacher for causing it all.

Before, after the fascination passed, it was grief. Then fear. Then outright panic. The first hint of rage appeared when she saw that cut on Raoul’s cheek, knowing without needing to ask that Erik struck her fiancée.

Now, as she sees the terror enveloping this place that has long been her home, it grows hotter.

“Those who tan…tan…tan…” Monsier Reyer repeats the phrase, as he has been for the past five minutes.

Christine can’t blame Piangi. Erik is a genius, but this…well _this_ piece is not something she likes. Everything about this music is dark and dissonant, anger dripping onto the pages of the score. These aren’t the otherworldly notes she heard that night deep down in the caverns of the opera house, the ones that made her see stars, that made her voice reach the heavens, somehow.

Erik’s always been angry, but it was that night on the rooftop that seems to have set off the uncontrolled rage.

She can’t think about it too much, that utter invasion of a private moment and the message her teacher took from it, that note he dropped after Il Muto, or she won’t make it through this. She has to make it through this. If not for herself, for her friends in this opera house.

And most of all, for Raoul.

Sometimes, on her darkest nights when Raoul stays over and lays asleep next to her, she blames herself for what she let Erik do. For the spell he put her under. She should have known he wasn’t an angel. She should have walked away from that voice.

Some days, she hates herself for it.

“For those who tangle with Don Juan!”

Piangi lands awkwardly on the note again. Meg nudges Christine’s foot from her place in the next chair, her perfect posture visibly tense and tight.

_Christine_ , she said a few days ago when they were alone after the disaster at the Masquerade. _Are you all right? I’m…I’m so sorry he told your secret. But I’m here for you. I promise I am._

_I know_ , Christine said, to this friend who has always been warm and loyal and kind. _Thank you, for everything. To think this night started with a proposal._

Despite everything, Meg clasped her hands together in glee, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. _I thought that necklace might mean something, and oh that ghost took it, didn’t he! I’m sure Raoul will buy you another. Are you going to move in? To the de Chagny house?_

Christine nodded. They haven’t had time to speak of the logistics yet, or when, or even time to talk about their small, secret ceremony. All they’ve had time to talk about is the opera house and Don Juan. They had to tell Phillipe, who was upset and worried. When they lay awake in the little flat last night, Christine wanted to dream of a wedding, however small it might have to be.

But she could only think of darkness. Of sharp, dissonant, screeching notes. The death’s head and Erik’s costume dripping, bleeding red from head to toe. The sight of Raoul slipping deep down into his clutches. She felt something coming, during the ball, all the masks everywhere and the walls closing in around her.

She longs to think of her future. She has a future in her hands. But she can’t. She can’t until this is over, and she knows she can really have it. Living in the de Chagny house with Raoul, loved and happy and free, seems like a picture from someone else’s life, a picture she could see in those peaceful six months that shattered when Erik stepped into the Masquerade, and took it away.

_Yes_ , Christine answered. _When all of this is over._

“No, no, no!” Monsieur Reyer shouts, and while this isn’t abnormal, exactly, he doesn’t normally shout at individual performers this way. He usually saves that for when the larger group of them have thoroughly done it wrong.

“His way is better!” Carlotta exclaims from Christine’s other side. “At least he makes it sound like music!”

Madame Giry taps her cane on the floor. “Would you speak that way in the presence of the composer signora?”

Carlotta whips around. “The composer is not here, and if he _were_ here…”

Madame Giry stands up, and for the first time in memory, Christine thinks she looks afraid. She grasps Meg’s hand, who squeezes tight.

“Can you be sure of that?”

Everyone goes silent. Carlotta’s face goes white.

And then, everything erupts into chaos. People are shouting at each other. Complaining. Monsieur Reyer looks ready to cry.

“No one will know if it is right or wrong!” Carlotta shouts. “No one will care!”

It’s then that the piano starts playing on its own. One key, and then another and another until it’s playing the music they’re meant to be singing, except, no one does. How it’s happening Christine doesn’t know, it must be a magic trick of some kind, but one thing is for certain.

The composer _is_ here, and he’s reminding them of it.

The rehearsal ends soon after.

“I hope you get some rest, signora,” Christine whispers to Carlotta, hoping to stay on even footing with the other woman now that they’ve reached a peace. Christine never wanted to fight, in any case, even if they are vying for the same parts. There must be a way for both of them, she’s certain of it.

Carlotta smiles just a little, before Piangi sweeps her away. “You as well, Mademoiselle Daae. We can work together on the music tomorrow, before the full rehearsal, if you would like.”

Christine agrees, eager to learn from a woman who has so long been a part of this opera house. What they might accomplish together is something no one considered, and which Erik, certainly, forbade.

She’s set to meet Raoul outside in a few minutes, eager to get away from the stifling confines of this place for a little while. To eat dinner in a restaurant and drink wine and forget. To fall asleep in the little flat that’s been her safe haven. To lay in Raoul’s arms and just be _Christine_ , and no one else. She needs to get something from her dressing room before she can go, but Meg’s pulled aside by her mother at the last moment, leaving Christine to face that haunted place alone.

She’s followed by chatter as she goes down the hallway, but as soon as she steps into her dressing room, the door shuts behind her.

Except, she didn’t shut it. It reminds her of the night Erik took her down to that underground lair, that night when she still thought him an angel, the night before the dream shattered. Raoul slipped back into her just before, and maybe it was her light that pierced through the shadows, opening Christine’s mind to the possibility that she was being fooled ever before an angel’s mask came off. Maybe it was all bound to happen, and she wishes Raoul was here with her, right now.

She spins around, looking for any sign of Erik, but of course, there is none.

Until there’s a voice.

And only a voice.

“Christine,” he says, softly, like silk running through her fingers, and it’s almost enough to make her give in, but no, she can’t. She won’t.

“What do you want, Erik?” It’s the first time Christine’s spoken with anger toward him, ever. She trembles. Trembles and trembles and _trembles_ , but she must be brave. For this opera house. For Raoul.

There’s a huff.

“I’m not your angel anymore, then? I see.”

“You hit Raoul,” Christine says, choosing something to focus on, because she can’t think about all the ways in which her teacher has betrayed her, all the ways that hurts, she’ll think of her father, and she can’t right now. “Threatened her.”

“She spoke out of turn to me,” her angel, the phantom, Erik, says. He sounds bored, except he sounds _too_ bored, like he’s covering something else up. Something like…fascination. Hate. Disgust. But still that strange intrigue. “Called me a monster.” He pauses. “Do you think I’m a monster, Christine?”

Christine sucks in a breath, on the verge of tears. “No.”

A pause.

Then that voice again. Sad and sweet and strange. Each and every word a note.

“Then why did you betray me?”

The accusation hits Christine harder than it should. It hits her because she remembers this voice, the one that came to her in the dark when she couldn’t sleep after first moving to the opera house roughly four years ago, prone to wandering the halls at night. Six months passed before she heard it, when she was sixteen going on seventeen and missing her freshly deceased father with an ache that pounded long and deep in her chest.

_Don’t cry_ , it said. _You have a lovely voice, and I can teach you._

She spun around in the darkened hallway, searching for the source of the voice in the shadows. A trick, surely. Someone being cruel to her in her grief.

_Who are you?_

_The Angel of Music._

She shouldn’t have believed it, and maybe she’s a fool. But she so longed for any snatch of her father in something more than memory, that she took that voice at its word. She told herself that voice, that angel, was sent by her father, or _was_ her father, somehow, in spirit. You learn to survive, when you lose a parent, especially when that parent was the only one you had left. The first step is getting through each day, each hour, each minute, with that pain in your chest, the pain that sticks sharply somewhere beneath your heart. You get better, as time passes, and the sharp pain turns into an ache that never really goes away. You figure out you _can_ survive.

The trouble is, Christine realizes, she’s never really learned to live.

She used to know, in those early days when she would play on the beach with Raoul as her father stood by, laughing in the summer sunshine. She knew as she leaned her head on his knee while he played the violin, music rushing through her heart and her blood and her soul.

“I didn’t betray you.” Tears rolls down her cheeks. “I didn’t know what you wished from me. You were my teacher, not…” She hesitates, pushing out the next words before the fear gets the better of her. “You betrayed me. You…you told the entire opera house about my relationship with Raoul and it…you _hurt_ me, Erik.”

“Don’t talk to me about that girl!”

The shout is an abrupt change from the smooth silk of his voice a few moments ago, and she should have expected it, he’s done it before, he did it that day when she took off his mask, but she jumps even still.

She doesn’t say she’s sorry.

Erik clears his throat. “Your relationship with her is wrong, Christine.” His voice turns hypnotic again, like he thinks he can cast a spell and talk her into walking away from the love of her life with a song. To walk away from herself, and be only what he wishes. “I think you know that.”

“It’s not,” Christine whispers, knowing that any priest and many people in the world would tell her otherwise, but she doesn’t care.

“She can’t understand you,” Erik says. “What is she, other than a silly, wealthy young woman who thinks she knows something about the arts?”

“Raoul loves music.” Christine protests before she thinks. “She’s never sought to perform, but she plays the violin. My father taught her to play.”

There’s a second, longer pause, one that holds a threat in it’s grasp.

“I think you know how much this opera means to me, Christine,” Erik says in that entrancing, enticing voice, paying the comment no mind. “It’s my masterpiece, and you are its star, even if the other fools in this opera house are barely up to the task. If it doesn’t go as I hope…” he trails off. “Well. You know I would never hurt _you_ , of course.”

He leaves who he would hurt up to the imagination.

“Even if you won’t return to our lessons,” Erik continues, and Christine swears he’s closer, somehow, his whisper a cold breath on her neck. “I’m sure you’ll use what I taught you to do my masterpiece justice.” He pauses again, and it’s maddening how he hangs onto words, using them like weapons. “I’d advise you to stay away from the de Chagny girl.”

“I _love_ her, Angel.”

The words come out before Christine thinks. The profession of love. The _Angel_. All of it. It’s everything all at once, isn’t it? Her relationship with Raoul. Her mixed up feelings for Erik, loathing and caring for him, all at once. She keeps hanging on to the teacher she thought she knew, looking for any sign of him in the man who hung a stagehand from the rafters. Who holds the entire opera house in his hands with threats and violence. Who hurt Raoul.

Who hurt her.

She has to find a way to let him go.

There’s no response. She gets what she needs and bolts from the dressing room, running into a startled Meg in the hallway.

“Christine!” Meg exclaims. “Oh, you look so pale, what’s the matter?” She furrows her brow. “It was the ghost, wasn’t it? He spoke to you?”

Christine nods.

“Didn’t you say Raoul would be waiting for you outside?” Meg asks. “We should go tell her.”

“No,” Christine says, too quickly, which makes Meg tilt her head. “We’re going to Philippe for dinner tonight, and there’s enough for her to worry about, as it is. I’ll tell her later this evening.”

“Christine. She loves you. She wants to protect you.”

Too much. To the point of her own destruction. Christine realized that when Raoul ran after Erik at the Masquerade, slipped out of sight, and came back with blood on her face.

Would the man she once called Angel try and kill Raoul? She thinks he might. She can’t rule it out, in any case. And if Raoul knows what happened here tonight while still in sight of the opera house?

It won’t go well.

No, she’ll wait until they’re away. She doesn’t want to tell a lie, but it’s only a temporary one.

She wants to keep Raoul safe, too.

“I know,” Christine says, searching Meg’s face. “I will tell her later this evening, but not right now. I don’t want her rushing in here and getting hurt.”

She keeps her voice as low as possible, because nothing is private here, it wasn’t even private on the rooftop where she thought she might be safe.

He’s always watching.

She shudders when she thinks of Don Juan, the lyrics pounding against her skull.

_Poor young maiden/for the thrill on her tongue of stolen sweets/She will have to pay the bill/tangled in the winding sheets._

When Raoul saw those words last evening, curiously peering over Christine’s shoulder as she prepared for today’s rehearsal, she nearly broke the wine glass she was holding.

Christine thinks of that doll that looks like her, that doll wearing a wedding dress. The doll she hasn’t told Raoul about, and wonders just how much her Angel, the phantom, Erik, has been watching her.

She doesn’t want to sleep with him, but the more she reads of the opera, the more she wonders if that’s what he’s wanted all along. This seduction.

Has he always seen her as someone to be his wife? Was it ever anything other than that? It had to have been, it…it went on too long, he taught her too much, for it to only be that, their bond set in music. But when did the change happen? When did he decide on these feelings, and opt not to tell her, simply expecting her to know? He’s been lying to her all along, but this piece…she doesn’t know when this piece began.

Meg reluctantly agrees, bidding Christine farewell with a kiss to her cheek. Christine goes out through the grand hall, giving a wave to Carlotta and Monsieur Andre as she goes, while avoiding an irritated Firmin’s eyes.

She hesitates by the door, making a show of tidying her hair and smoothing her dress. A sudden, panicked thought hits her across the face, falling deep down to the pit of her stomach. The thought she’s had ever since the night of the Masquerade days ago—years?—the one she tried to push away. The one brought forth by hearing that voice today. Those threats.

The hint in her teacher’s voice that he will not let her go, no matter what she wants.

What if the day comes, and she has to choose between Erik and Raoul? Not as in who she’s in love with, she knows that clearly, but between Erik’s demands, and Raoul’s life? What if the only thing she can do to keep Raoul safe _is_ to hand herself over? She heard that disgusted fascination in Erik’s voice. That intrigue that said he has latched onto the idea of not just being with her, but finding a way to tear Raoul apart for daring to defy him. For daring to be someone other than who he expected.

No. No. They’ll fix this. They’ll find a way.

She loosens her shoulders, shaking off the dark as she emerges into the sunlight.

Raoul greets her as she steps outside, a worried smile on her face. She puts both her hands out for Christine to take before her face falls and she looks around her to see if anyone’s watching.

She never did that, before Erik exposed them.

She puts out one hand instead, loosely grasping Christine’s fingers. All Christine wants is to be able to rush out the door and into a kiss like any other couple in Paris, but she can’t.

“How was rehearsal?” Raoul asks.

“A bit dreadful,” Christine admits. “We can talk about it later. Come here a moment, I have something I want to show you.”

Raoul tilts her head in an endearing way, and Christine smiles, truly smiles, tugging on Raoul’s hand before leading her around to the side of the opera house where no one can see them. She steers Raoul toward the building much like Raoul steered her toward the angel statue that night they first professed their love, kissing her without another word. Raoul makes a little noise of surprise before she’s returning the kiss with vigor, wrapping her arms around Christine’s waist and pressing them together. Christine slides her hands into Raoul’s hair, losing her fear and her anxiety as she focuses on this, and only this. The feel of Raoul’s lips on hers. The sun in the sky. This feeling of being so _alive_.

Christine felt shy about this part of things, at first, but Raoul is a rather excellent teacher, and she’s felt comfortable growing bolder. Listening to some of the other opera girls talk, she thought she might be uncomfortable, or afraid, given how they’ve complained about some of the men they’ve slept with, but it was never like that, with Raoul. She was nervous her first time like anyone might be, but Raoul made her feel at ease, like she does with everything.

Now, Christine doesn’t feel shy at all. In fact, she’d like to stay here and kiss Raoul a while, and forget about the world, but they break apart sooner than they might have for fear of passerby even in this hidden alcove. A stray hair’s fallen out of Raoul’s braid, so Christine tucks behind her fiancée’s ear, her fingers running lightly down Raoul’s cheek.

Raoul quirks an eyebrow, breathing a little hard as she tosses her now messy braid over her shoulder. “You’re _very_ forward, Mademoiselle Daae. Did you miss me?”

“Terribly,” Christine answers, giggling as Raoul goes in for a second, swifter kiss, her eyes glittering with mischief.

“I love you,” Christine whispers. “So much, Raoul.”

“I love you,” Raoul says, with such earnestness Christine could die. Sweet, brave, headstrong Raoul.

Sometimes Christine wonders what she did to deserve her.

“Are you all right?” Raoul asks.

“Yes.” A lie. She’s not, but they need to talk about that later. “Tired from rehearsal. But we’re due to meet Philippe, aren’t we?”

“We are.” Raoul leads Christine out of the alley and toward her carriage, which she sometimes convinces the driver to let her drive herself, though not today. “I may need his help with the police. They agreed to attend the opera and help us, but I think they thought me…too forward, for a woman.”

Christine quirks her eyebrows. “You? Never.”

Raoul laughs, and sweeps Christine in the carriage. Christine holds on tight to Raoul’s hand, and tries, at least for a moment to pretend like they aren’t facing what they’re facing.

Life, or death.


End file.
